Newt Gingrich releases a soliloquy on energy: ‘I know that we can do better’

Newt Gingrich is optimistic about America's oil future, given that he's elected as President, of course. (Charles Dharapak/AP Photo)

Newt Gingrich recently presented an ad, featuring himself talking about energy for 29 minutes. Yes, that’s right. Just him, talking about energy, for 29 minutes. According to Wall Street Journal, his campaign is planning to run the full ad in “key cities” until Super Tuesday March, 6.

A half-hour infomercial.

It’s unconventional, but it’s pure Newt.

He’s a man of big ideas who speaks in soliloquies rather then sound bites. And in this video, he speaks grandly — with an authoritative tone — of the bold measures it will take to bring energy independence to America.

“Turns out, we may have more oil in the United States today, given new science and new technology than we have actually pumped worldwide since 1870,” he claims. “We may, in fact, by one estimate have three times as much oil in the United States as there is in Saudi Arabia.”

Of course, he does not miss out on an opportunity to criticize the Obama administration for allegedly being anti-oil, anti-gas and anti-fossil-fuels, presiding over skyrocketing gasoline prices and a skyrocketing federal deficit.

“I know that we can do better,” Gingrich says. “And I know that if we open up American energy, think about the things that happen simultaneously. We get a lot more jobs, that is, people that come off of unemployment … And they go to work taking care of their family and paying taxes. So government revenue goes up, government expenses go down.”

Not everyone shares Gingrich’s energy worldview, though. Heather Taylor-Miesle, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, does not even take Gingrich seriously.

“If we put everything aside, we have 3 percent of the world’s oil reserve, and 25 percent of the global demand,” she says. “So no matter what we do, it will be a drop in the bucket, and it is not going to provide relief. Oil production is at a four year high, and we still have record high gas prices.”

Taylor-Miesle says that even if there is no “Peak Oil” [the point where the maximum oil extraction has been reached] as Gingrich claims in the ad, oil will still be more expensive, be more environmental risky and increasingly be coming from more dangerous parts of the world.

“We are not going to drill our way into energy independence,” she claims. “That will require a huge scale up of renewable resources. Gingrich is pandering. This is not serious policy.”

Still, if you don’t know what to do for the next 29 minutes, here’s the ad: